Tofig Zulfuqarov: Baku must build a relationship with Trump administration

The foreign policy of Donald Trump's team is just being formed, and its main focus will be known after his inaugural speech. In the meantime, we can talk about trends and judge by the pre-election promises. They give a ground to suggest  that Trump will pay less attention to the foreign policy and more  deal with specific problems of Americans, said the ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Tofig Zulfuqarov in an interview  with Cətin sual program (“Difficult question”) of  Turan agency.

Zulfuqarov said that Obama also promised that American soldiers will no longer take part in wars and withdrew troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the US is involved in regional conflicts by other means, and Trump  just criticized it.

Zulfuqarov believes  that under the presidency of  Trump the USA  will intervene in world affairs, when it  will affect rather the interests of America, than for the sake of some of the declared principles.

Will not this lead to the strengthening of Russia's role, if the attention of the US to the international affairs decreases? Answering this question, Zulfuqarov said that if America's role weakens,  other regional players will be more  active. "In our region, more active  will be  Turkey, Russia and Iran,"  said Zulfuqarov.

What does such prospect promise Azerbaijan? Answering this question, the diplomat noted that Trump announced plans to invest more in the energy sector. If that happens, the US will become competitors to traditional energy players, supplying shale gas to the markets. However, Azerbaijan is not a major player on the European energy market.

Trump policy for the eastern Ukraine and Crimea reflects the trend of weakening Western protests to violation of territorial integrity of Ukraine. In general, with time the international community weakens interest to conflict, and the same thing occurred with respect to the Karabakh problem. Therefore, Ukraine, like Azerbaijan must rely on internal forces.

The events following the escalation of the conflict in April this year showed that neither the US nor the Russian Federation could not or did not want to change the status quo. "They are interested in maintaining the status quo and probably the world powers do not want to go, even the release of some of our regions," the former head of the Foreign Ministry said.

It seems that Azerbaijan does not intend to put up with this situation. Zulfuqarov considers that Azerbaijan is better to build bilateral relations with the administration of Trump and other international and regional actors, as the format of international organizations "does not work in view of disability."  —06В03-